Rodeo Games has recently released a freemium Turn Based Strategy game that allows you play plenty for free and even more with an in-app purchase option. For fans of TBS games this is a heavy hitter not only because the game is well designed and beautifully rendered, but also has fresh content updated constantly. With an easy to use interface and controls, Hunters updates every 24 hours with more content and missions. This will keep you hooked into the game and will keep you satisfied for a long time.

Gameplay

Hunters is pretty easy to pick and play: you are given a bunch of mercenaries and asked to finish a bunch of contracts. Once you start the game, you will find a great tutorial that explains all the basics in a great manner. The controls are simple and require tapping to place a mercenary and tapping to attack or move. The game is in 3D and each of your mercenaries carry a white health bar as well as white dots indicating the number of actions that character can take.

To perform actions you have to use points and each character has different level of points. This adds some complexity to how you many the team as some of them have long range weapons and don?t need to move a lot to do damage to enemies while others have melee weapons who need to get up and close.

Each character on your team has weapons and armor. There are three types of armor and each has respective actions points. The heaviest armor have the lowest number of action points while the lightest armor has the most action points. These are crucial as you plan your strategy to finish your contracts. There are 7 weapons classes and you will need upgrade your mercenaries to unlock them. Knowing your weapons? powers and ranges will really help you during the game as they vary a lot depending on the type (Assault Rifles, SMGs, Shotguns, Flamethrower, etc.)

Moving, guarding and attacking costs action points and the map is basically a square grid where you move your team forward while attacking enemy unit. The fog of war effect is also here and since you can?t enemy units far away you will need to take all possibilities into your strategy.

Contracts too are varied, some require you to destroy facilities that the enemy is guarding, others send you to retrieve stuff, and there are those just straight up fight where you have to eliminate all enemy units. When you finish a contract, you are given cash, items and experience points. There is also an armory which updates every hour with fresh items to help you finish your contracts. You can also level up your mercenaries to make them more powerful. Once you level them up, you get new weapons and items and more special abilities. You can also receive free gifts, which is an in-game ads links where you have to click on ads then return to game to collect your gifts.

Hunters is a good TBS game out of the box, but what makes it great is the ever refreshing contract updates every 24 hours, allowing you to try something different every time you load the game. You can replay old contracts to earn more money and experience. Free version allows only a few missions and your mercenaries can only upgrade to level two while paid version allows upgrade to level 10. There are occasional crashes in our tests.

Graphics and Sound

The 3D graphics in Hunters are eye-catching with cool looking characters and great looking environments. Each mission has its own layout and enemy placement, and everything fits in nicely whether you are in a junkyard or a futuristic power plant. The game looks great on the iPad but it doesn?t yet have retina support on the iPod version. The controls are simple to use, and efficient.

The music for the game is alright and after some time, you would rather just listen to your own iPod music. What?s better in the audio department are the sound effects. They have an interesting space kind of echoing and strong bass humming kind of feel, and there are firefight sound FX as well as voice acting during the gameplay.

Conclusion

Hunters: Episode One is a very polished turn-based strategy game that has a lot of replay value thanks to constant updates. The game is challenging and requires you to have great battle tactics. Graphics look great especially if you play it on an iPad. You can check it out for free and you will get hooked!

Ratings:

Graphics: - 4.5 -The gorgeous graphics look good, but does not support retina display. Sound: - 4 -The in-game music is not bad, but I would prefer listening to my iPod music. Controls: - 5 -Controls are easy to master because they only involve tapping.Gameplay: - 4.5 -The gameplay is great and involves daily content updates. We need a leaderboard!